


Killed Your Light

by tzigane, Zaganthi (Caffiends)



Series: Ashes to Ashes [4]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion, Gundams, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Plans For The Future, Post-War, Team Bonding, War, ZERO System (Gundam Wing)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:53:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzigane/pseuds/tzigane, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiends/pseuds/Zaganthi
Summary: "Hey, man!" Duo plunked himself down beside him, one arm slinging over his shoulder. "You look like your cat died or some shit. Pretty sure that's not supposed to be the face you're wearin'."He had wanted to fight the man fair and square; and Treize had fought, fought with a ferocity that made him understand how the man had been an instructor when he was seventeen. And then he'd just stopped. He'd launched himself at Wufei and hadn't parried the blow and he didn't realize it was happening until it was done, until he saw the mobile suit destruct.
Relationships: Chang Wufei/Treize Khushrenada
Series: Ashes to Ashes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711870
Kudos: 3





	Killed Your Light

Wufei left as unexpectedly as he had arrived, and Treize did not waste time mourning or considering it. He knew, he knew why and he knew the weight of what Wufei had been doing had settled too heavily on his shoulders. He'd violated their shared un-reality, the peace of it, but it had been necessary.

Everything he did was necessary, so he focused on finishing the Gundam and he didn't leave the estate.

Anyone with sense would assume that would be his first step. At this point, whatever he was getting off of ZERO was the absolute antithesis of sense, and he was so close now.

So close to finishing it.

The Ancients had called it ZERO. Treize wasn't sure that this even qualified anymore. He'd fiddled with the base code a to improve the efficiency, but it had mostly changed on its own after that. Something about the interaction between his nanites and Wufei's, he was certain of that much. He had decided to call it Epyon System. There was something about the sound of it that made him feel... not happy, he didn't think. Pleased was more along the lines of it. Satisfied. Something that would outlive them all, something of a sentience that would touch at minds as it had his, as it had Wufei's. Sometimes he imagined he could hear it when he wasn't using it, and maybe he could. Everything was so clear, even if it seemed random. 

He knew the Treize Faction was beginning to get an upper hand and that it would be time soon. Time for him to reassume power and make the next steps into a peaceful world.

Time for him to see Zechs again. Time for him to see Wufei.

He was never going to be entirely at peace with what happened but he was as close to it as he would get. It wasn't resentment that Wufei would be the one to kill him; it was the way it would make Wufei feel afterward, and there was nothing Treize could do about it. That was what left him feeling unsettled.

He had regrets. He had a lifetime of griefs and attempts to fix the damage he'd caused, knowing or not, and Wufei was a regret he was only going to make worse with further contact. There was nothing he could give him, nothing he could do to take away the sting of everything that was going to happen.

He had finished the Gundam and was making notes over coffee when Heero arrived.

In a perfect world, he supposed that he would be waiting in darkness dressed in his uniform, and that Heero would come in, verified by some security system that automatically knew him, and point a gun at him. They would trade senseless statements, and he would hand the proverbial keys to him. This being a decidedly imperfect world, he was instead waiting in his shop with cooling coffee and Wufei's favorite pastries when Heero walked through the door, casual and easy. Claude's wife might be sending them still as some sort of remonstrance, Treize thought. She always liked an appreciative audience, and Wufei had certainly been that.

The uniform and the show would be for later, but in the moment he set down his datapad and took a sip of his coffee, feeling grimy and tired and... yes, he was tired. Everything was terrible and so close to turning over to a better world, and he needed to play his part to do it. Just to edge the horror of it all past the cusp of bearing, to shock a weary drained world out of ennui. 

"Heero Yuy. It's an interesting name to pick; he was my great uncle. You look a little like he did when he was young, so who knows?" The real murdered Heero had been tall, and the young man in front of him would never be tall, body wrecked by constant atmosphere entries, by war, by knowing nothing but murder and fighting. "Coffee?"

Ah, there was the gun he'd been expecting. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't shoot you right now."

"I do not have a good reason." He took a sip of coffee and closed his eyes to enjoy the heat, the taste, before he swallowed. "And I look forward to seeing you Gundam pilots bring peace to the world."

"I should shoot you just for trying to suborn 05. I know he was here." Of course he did. "I want to know why. And what your plans are."

He stood up and walked toward his creation to pull the sheeting down off of it. Did none of them notice the giant Gundam in the building when they walked in or did it all seem too impossible? "To build this. I needed help to finish it in time. I call it Epyon; a gift and a test for you."

"A gift. And a test." The barrel of the gun dropped. "Looks more like a mobile suit to me." Those eyes narrowed, gaze sharp and watchful. 

"It's a Gundam," Treize agreed, deadpan. 

Dark blue gaze turned his way. "And everyone who sees a Gundam must die," Heero replied, the faint edge to that statement bizarrely bland.

"Yes. Just so." He caught himself smiling as he turned toward Heero. "It's an improvement on the ZERO system. It's... everything you could do, everything your future holds, every future, every action you could take in battle."

"Sounds just like standard ZERO." Heero was watching him, the lines on his forehead deepening. Treize didn't have to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking.

"It's cleaner. Clearer. If you have the wits for it, you can take it into options." He left that as a challenge, watching the young man's face. "I, however, have run out of options."

Run out of everything. "Is that why 05 left?"

"Wufei had his own reasons for leaving. He knows what he has to do." He laid a proprietary hand against the side of the Gundam's leg. "I'll open the roof for you. Let us not waste any more time."

"Just like that." Well. Yes. Yes, it was. This was his plan. It was the one that led to the best ending. "What's the catch?"

"You need a Gundam until Wing Zero comes back to you." He wandered over to the wall panel and flipped the breaker that would let him power on the roof.

"I need a lot of things." The motor was loud, and Heero looked up, watching as the night sky was revealed. "You make no sense."

"I don't need to make sense. I know what I'm doing. I know what the world needs to reach a state of equilibrium." He smiled tightly at Heero. "Enjoy."

That blink was the only sign of surprise. "That's it. You're just going to give me this thing."

"Yes. I have no future for Epyon to show me. My time in this is coming to an end. Yours is not." How did he make it clearer except to shout at him to take the fucking Gundam? Which probably would not help.

He didn't expect for Heero to nod, almost as if he'd handed him the proverbial keys to the car. "I'll take it." 

And he didn't even pause to kick the tires.

There was nothing else to say that was worth saying. He nodded tightly in response, and watched Heero get himself up into the massive machine's cockpit. He might find the helmet interface a bit daunting but he was a smart boy. He'd work it out.

Treize lifted his cup and drank from it, outwardly calm and inwardly a maelstrom of emotion ranging from pride to regret to pure longing because being alone on the estate was going to be even more difficult once his pet project left by way of the roof. There was nothing for it. He had done a necessary thing, something that would help Sanc, that would buy them all the right kind of time before things got worse. 

Before they got better, too. 

He stayed to the side while the machine rumbled to life, watching its boosters fire with a sort of... what he imagined fatherly pride felt like. He and Wufei had done an excellent job; it was a masterpiece of war, making its way into the night sky. Maybe he would start building another. He'd have time on his hands. Not much of it, of course, but he'd need something to do for a few weeks, in any case. Might as well spend it usefully, he supposed. He needed to wait, and he wasn't the kind of man who sat idly when he had time to kill. With that decided, he pressed the switch to close the roof again, and reached for his little datapad to work out how to get all the spare parts he could manage brought to him.

* * *

Space.

He had missed it.

Earth was nice; it had all kinds of interesting places to see. It was beautiful and ugly and he had set a appalling number of those places on fire.

Space was something else, though. Yes, there was only the thin shell of his mobile suit between him and vacuum, but it was home. It was the place that seemed perfectly natural to him.

It seemed real to him in a way that green grass and horses and birds didn't quite. It didn't leave him with the subtle unsettled feeling, knowing he was home in the vast bright glitter of stars, the light that reflected in all of the right places now that he was close to L5 again.

So close, and he felt a wave of homesickness or loneliness or... he didn't know what. He knew full well that no one was expecting him to return. They would have sent everyone in the quarantined areas off-colony by now, even if that was mostly just him and the doctors. Even Mu Tsu had been infected in the end, and yes. That was homesickness and loneliness, even if what he actually felt happened to be loneliness for what he'd left behind.

He had a feeling that he was getting a little too good at leaving things behind.

Nothing clung to him but anger and confusion and a need to make things right in a world where everything was desperately wrong. Nothing made sense, and the ghost memories of the ZERO system Treize had built haunted the fringes of his mind, suggested fire and destruction and mobile dolls just before his eyes. It wasn't there -- he could see the lights of the colony, and he reached up, pulled a screen to wakefulness. A few swipes of his fingers and he could hear the tone that flick brought to life. There was no way to stop the smile that crept over his mouth.

_"Wufei. What are you doing here?"_

Meiran's grandmother wasn't usually quite that blunt. "I was hoping to talk to my father."

There was silence in reply. _"Wufei. He had not been well. I am sorry. You should not come here."_

It wasn't unexpected. It wasn't, and yet it still struck at the core of him, enough that he had to bite down hard on his lip to keep the gasp from spilling out, to keep from sobbing. If his voice seemed a little raw a moment later, he was sure that no one would say anything. "I-I see. I..." His brain wanted to scream. His brain wanted a lot of things it shouldn't have, or maybe his heart did. The core of him, anyway.

_"He loved you. And because he loved you, you need to go. There is nothing for you here. We have nothing left to do, but..."_

Oh.

Oh, and that was a deeper sorrow, and he did gasp then, couldn't stop it, doubled over because it was remarkably like being kicked in the gut. "We... we can't be there yet. There's someone, he survived, he... he managed to reprogram the..."

 _"Buying time, Wufei, for one man is different from society. A society needs to grow to thrive, not survive. We have used our resources, fought, had good lives. The colony was fading before it happened, before you and Meiran were born."_ Her voice was strong, calmer somehow. _"You will remember us."_

He'd be alone.

He had known. He had, but knowing and _knowing_ were very different things, and he wasn't sure that he could live with this knowledge. He wasn't sure of a lot of things. "Yes. Yes, Grandmother Liung." What else could he say?

 _"You are a good boy. Be strong, make her proud."_ The connection cut, and he knew what was coming next but it still shocked him, the combustions of the colony's rings, smothered by the vacuum of space, the mobile suits pouring off the colony as it started to implode, to...

The fucking mobile suits.

There were fucking _mobile suits_ waiting for him, and something clicked, turning over and flipping some kind of switch at the center of him. Whether it was fury or grief or some unknowable and indecipherable thing, he might never know, and he didn't care. He didn't _fucking care_ , and he was going to kill them all.

They were mostly empty, dolls, automatic killing machines, and he went for them, but he didn't stop with them. They collapsed quickly even with his Gundam in need of repairs and upgrade; they didn't have the skill programmed into them, and the few human pilots weren't good enough. How dare they come to his colony. How dare they come near his people, his _family_?

He didn't stop until there was nothing left around him but debris, the remains of the colony, scattered detritus everywhere from mobile suits and he didn't know what else. His breath was heavy, panicked. His eyes were hot and wet and he was alone.

He was _alone_.

Forever.

* * *

Everything had worked so well.

His world had been working sideways for so long that it was quietly surprising when it fell into place again, allowing him to remain steady on a path that would right the tilt of the world. Sometimes he felt as if he were surfing the edge of a catastrophic curve, had been his whole life, skill and luck and timing keeping him alive and placed just where the world needed him.

It was arrogance, he knew, but he was tired and he could indulge himself, to think that any of it might matter ten years from then, twenty. Thirty. But the view from the windows was lovely and he could not allow his sometimes lover/childhood friend wipe all of that off the map.

He knew the second she stepped in the room, her heel clicking softly on the marble floor before her voice, soft yet utterly steady, was heard behind him. "General Khushrenada. It's been some time."

"It has." He turned slightly and caught sight of her, then let himself have a moment. She was so lovely and graceful and looked every bit the queen who would one day reunite her kingdom. It hadn't been quite so clear on the datastream in his workshop.

"You look just like your mother. You carry your burden with grace."

"I suppose I have you to thank for the... absence of the people with whom I was to meet." Among other things, he was sure. "I would say that it's nice to see you again after so long, but somehow I don't think meeting is precisely what you have in mind." The sparkle of light on her tiara was lovely. How they had gotten that safely out of Sanc was anyone's best guess.

"No, you're right." He smiled graciously at her and gave her his full attention as he turned away from the window. He hadn't bothered with lights because it still felt appropriate to linger in darkness for a little while longer. "It's about your brother. You can't do what needs to be done."

"You mean deal with his insanity." How surprising. Her mother never would have been quite so blunt, and Treize hadn't thought that she would be this direct after being raised by a diplomat. "I barely remember Father, but I do remember his obsession with peace. And I remember some of his more esoteric lectures. I'm also quite good at reading through the lines of history texts. What was it they called Grandfather? Ah. Irascible, I believe."

"That was kind of the texts," he offered, tilting his head slightly in deference. "You can hold onto your higher ideals, Queen Relena. I am relieving you of your duties as the Romefeller representative. And I will deal with your brother and his allies. Earth must fight back."

Relena laid a hand upon the back of one of the chairs and pulled it out, seating herself. "Do you really think that you can deal with him? It isn't as if he's remotely reasonable anymore. If history serves, it's highly unlikely he will be again."

"Yes. Hopefully, you personally have more of your mother in you. And I will do those things that a pure pacifist cannot. We will bring the battle to your brother." He wished to keep the conversation light, circumspect; she was an intelligent woman, she'd follow the gist of it.

"And I'm sure it doesn't hurt that you want to take care of the political arena in which we've been forced to function." Romefeller had too much power. She wasn't wrong about that. It had been to his advantage to use it before, and it was again now.

"I don't want the power. I want peace. I have a different idea how we can take humanity there. And they will need you when I am done." He folded his hands behind his back, posture at ease. The skin at the small of his back was still new and tender. It ached fiercely when he pressed his knuckles against the spot. "People like me don't belong in a peaceful world."

Reaching up, Relena began pulling pins out of her hair, the braid slowly coming undone. He wasn't surprised when she lifted the crown and put it down on the table in front of her. "Hm. I wonder if that's actually true."

"I suppose we will find out." He didn't interrupt her; whatever she left behind would be tucked away for safekeeping. "I've left instructions with my staff to return to you a few boxes of mementos of Sanc and some of your brother's things after this is done. Photographs and I believe the family Bible or some copy of it. He was incredibly careless with those things when he felt he did not deserve the name Peacecraft."

She smiled. "Thank you. I would very much like to have those things. I wish that I had been allowed to know him before the inevitable conclusion." Relena finished uncoiling her braid and sighed. "Heavy is the head that wears the crown." One hand waved. "I realize the appropriate phrase is uneasy but I'll be honest. The blessed thing is cursed heavy." She paused. "Are you sure this is a burden you need to carry alone?"

"Yes. Nothing that I do need taint your rule or reflect on your future decisions. You are not a hypocrite and I respect your drive for true peace on Earth. Your hopeful reign, however, has been cut short by a ruthless dictator." And he was falling apart. It was so close, all so close to the end, and it was hard not to feel the pressure of it, not to feel a desperate edge as they came closer to what had once been a holy day for humanity.

Carefully, Relena leaned forward, her hand lightly placed on his wrist. "I understand." Probably more than he would like for her to under the circumstances. "If you decide on a different course of action, please don't be afraid to call upon me."

The touch made him realize, jarringly, how isolated he had been since Wufei had left, and it stroked a melancholic chord in him. Unto the end, then. He didn't reply to that directly, but rather said, "Travel safe, Queen Relena."

She tilted her head and looked at him from the side of her eyes. "I hope your journey brings you to wherever it is you wish to be."

"Thank you." She was gracious in what had to have been an unexpected if not unwelcome change. And eventually she would find her way back to the top again. It probably wouldn't even take long.

* * *

Working on a mech on a ship was ridiculously easy compared to working on it in full grav. Wufei grunted and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead before sticking the wrench back into the guts of the thing and tightening the bolt holding the arm in position. He was getting quite good at working on them. He had known what to do but he had lacked the confidence before Khushrenada had pushed him through so much of building Epyon.

It wasn't the time to think of him; bad enough that he did when he was alone, dreamed about him. Nightmares as often as not. Things Epyon had shown him, and the more things fell into place, the sicker it made him. Pausing, he glared at the wrench and then the bolt. Heavyarms was weirdly different than Nataku. Maybe it shouldn't be, but something about it just felt strange. Off, maybe.

It was different, not mechanically different, perhaps, but... it wasn't as if Gundams had a spirit, so perhaps the tone of it was off. "I'd like to help."

Glancing down, Wufei smiled. Just a little. Trowa had been understanding when he'd needed to be understood. "Sure. Come on up."

He quietly climbed up the platform -- Khushrenada had been insane, who worked on a monstrosity like that without scaffolding? -- and eyed Wufei and then the wrenches.

"We've got a lot of different things going on here. You had a little less maneuverability than I would have liked. I think I've got it if you want to double check things." Reaching up, he started tightening a secondary bolt. "I had to finish mine up a couple or three weeks ago."

"You still routed those dolls." No one really talked a lot except Duo and sometimes Quatre. Everyone else let the sad things lie, let the world unravel without asking.

Wufei nodded even as Trowa began working on something further over. "I despise those things. They make war cheap. There's no conscience to them."

"Your colony." His colony. Yes, his colony, and he wondered what would come next only there was nothing as Trowa fussed with a bit of sheathing.

They had an understanding; words weren't needed, and he was grateful for it. "Yes." After that. He had holed himself away, stolen an appalling amount of things to finish the work. It had given him time to mourn and obsess.

"What will you do?" Now, after, there was no specificity to it. Just out there, waiting for him to somehow answer an impossible question.

"I suppose that all depends." On a lot of things. Mostly on whether they lived or not, and he had a feeling that at least Trowa and Heero weren't counting on it. Duo seemed the sort who'd live or die trying, which was an amusing enough idea. And Quatre... he seemed too gentle for this sometimes.

Sometimes Wufei wondered if he weren't, as well. The _him_ of before had been, and then they had come to his home and they had killed his wife. They had killed everyone, in their own way. That left just him to live as best he could, and he would have to live, he thought. Live and be strong for the people he had loved who couldn't be saved.

That was what they wanted. They had been proud of him, rising to the challenge of filling the hole Meiran had left with her death, but they had known at heart he was a thinker. That he wanted to be left alone with his books and his thoughts more than anything. "I'd go back to the circus."

Wufei hummed, voice quiet, his momentary pause thoughtful. "You seem to like it there. Even if the soup is terrible." Not the coffee, though. He suspected Trowa had made that himself.

"It was peaceful." Perhaps that was something the pilot of Heavyarms craved. Wufei wasn't going to allow himself to fantasize about an after that probably wasn't going to come. After? After the war ended, everything would magically be okay and fixed? It didn't work that way, any student of history could say as much.

Then again, he was certain that the only people who paid attention to the things taught to them by history were historians. Possibly literature nerds. Definitely not politicians, on the whole. "A lot of us could do with some peace." He picked up a screwdriver and began working again.

There was a stretch of silence, and they worked diligently for a while. It was easy, and Trowa took his time with words. "Catherine said that I need to allow myself to have a nice life."

Wufei tilted his head thoughtfully and paused. "You should. We all should." If they lived. It was perhaps morbid to consider it, but it had to be taken into consideration. Not to the point of distraction, but it was something he needed to consider. What would he do if a miracle occurred and peace broke out? He had no home to go to. Just a Gundam. Just a lover who would die at his hand if everything came into fruition the way he had been shown. "I think..." His voice was slow, quiet, thoughtful. "I think I'll go back to school. Something utterly useless. Philosophy, maybe." It didn't get much more pointless than that, he supposed.

"Philosophy brought us most of the sciences." That was almost a quick answer for Trowa. "And literature. Maybe we all need to study it again."

And that... well. He laughed, soft and quiet. "Maybe we do. Maybe it would be good for all of us. Before this, I... I studied a lot. More maths than anything else. My wife thought that I should take what we're doing more seriously. Spend more time on this sort of thing, I suppose."

"But the engineers who built these relied on math. Most pilots get away with enough to calculate trajectory and come down through atmosphere; more is better." It helped and it didn't help. When he was in a fight, his mind went blank, peacefully so.

Wufei shrugged and picked up a ratchet. "I wasn't interested in this then. I fought it, I suppose. I just..." He shrugged. "I didn't want to be the person who did any of this. She had very different opinions, and she wasn't afraid to fight about it. She was... really something."

"I'm sorry I never met her." He probably meant that honestly; he seemed to admire most of the people they had met along the way, where Wufei only considered a few to be truly something different in the world. Meiran would probably have enjoyed meeting Sally Po. She would have enjoyed fighting with several of them. 

"I am sorry about many things." Yeah, he was pretty sure the hydraulic line was well-settled now. Should be, anyway. They didn't have as much time as he'd like. 

"Yes. Do you think this is enough shielding around the cockpit?"

And they were going to make every minute of it count.

* * *

It was over.

Everyone seemed... They seemed happy. He thought they seemed happy.

He should be. Probably.

Happy, that was. He should be anything but numb and fucked up and staring out into the black of space. He had wanted this. Worked for it. Trained for it. Learned all kinds of insane things to bring it to fruition.

He wasn't even wearing a spacesuit

Treize had been in his stupid uniform, blue jacket, probably wearing those ridiculous boots. Wufei wasn't entirely sure how he had moved so easily in them, as if it were nothing. It made no sense.

Nothing made any sense.

"Hey, man!" Duo plunked himself down beside him, one arm slinging over his shoulder. "You look like your cat died or some shit. Pretty sure that's not supposed to be the face you're wearin'."

He had wanted to fight the man fair and square; and Treize had fought, fought with a ferocity that made him understand how the man had been an instructor when he was seventeen. And then he'd just stopped. He'd launched himself at Wufei and hadn't parried the blow and he didn't realize it was happening until it was done, until he saw the mobile suit destruct. 

Until Earth surrendered. 

"C'mon. You need a drink, Wufei. It's over."

Somehow, he managed to turn his head and look at... his friend? His fellow pilot? This person he barely knew, except he did. They'd spent weeks imprisoned together. "Then why doesn't it feel like it's over?"

"Because you're all messed up on adrenaline, and there's a comedown, and it's _over_ ," he said, jostling him. "OZ is done for and you did it. Noin is gonna help make them something new."

Something new didn't seem right. "Yeah. Okay." Except it wasn't and he didn't know how he'd ever get it out of his head. Probably he wouldn't. He'd just live it again and again in nightmares, the same way he saw Meiran, but Duo was rising now, holding out his hand, and Wufei took it because he didn't know what else to do.

He was forever going to be watching people he couldn't even bury die right before his eyes. Death in a Gundam was not gentle; it was closer to a car crash, multiple cars crashing into a person, and then exploding out, and he felt sick because he knew how bad it could be. Had been. "Food will help. I wouldn't call it a party, but..."

"But it's what passes for a celebration when you're still surrounded by corpses." Floating in space, waiting for someone to find them. Waiting for the scavengers to show up and try to make something off of the metal and the mess.

"Yeah. That's pretty much it. It's grim work. I think some of them are the good guys cleaning up out there. Whoever the good guys are today." He pulled Wufei into a corridor, and then down it.

When he laughed, there wasn't much humor to it. "Maybe today it's us. Or maybe we get our turn tomorrow." He remembered a book he'd read once, a long time ago. It had been about the end of the world, only the world hadn't ended at all because one boy had decided it shouldn't. That maybe everyone should take turns getting to be the proverbial good guys. Wufei didn't feel much like a good guy today.

He could still see the weird look of relief on Treize's face as the Gundam short-circuited through him, the way he'd tipped his head back and closed his eyes before the explosion had ended it. It would be there in his head forever, even if he hadn't seen it in reality, just through the images from Epyon.

The only slight relief was the report that the crazy blond man was dead as well.

God, Wufei hoped he had suffered.

"Maybe next week," Duo agreed.

He might as well go along with it, with whatever party they were planning or whatever came next. "So which lunatic even brought liquor on board?"

"This lunatic! Quatre complained, but you know, he can stand there and drink water, or whatever, milk. I refuse to feel guilty right now." Wufei doubted it was even much of a complaint.

They walked into the small conference space and found it to be a mix of planning clusters and people drinking while planning. He didn't have any plans. Probably he needed to see about getting some. Deciding what to do with his life from here on out. He'd have to figure out what would make his family proud, his people. Or maybe he'd just live his own life. "It's... weird," he said finally, listening to everyone around them. "I'm alone. I don't think I've ever been quite so completely alone before." It was possibly even weirder that he was saying it to Duo Maxwell.

Duo, who never seemed to be alone, and just smiled at him in a relaxed, warm way. "You had your revenge with you before, and now with that colony destroying bastard dead, you don't even have that. You have us. We're all..."

Alone. Fucked up? Wufei didn't know. "Trowa says he'll go back to the circus."

"And Quatre has his family. And Heero..." He looked around like he might find him. "I don't know. I don't know what he'll do. I don't know what I'll do."

"Live. I suppose." He wasn't sure any of them knew exactly how to do that. Maybe there was a guide someplace. Maybe it really was time to take up a new degree. Philosophy. Literature. Something new, something he hadn't wanted to do before and didn't even know if he wanted to do now.

Duo snorted. "Yeah. With a Gundam and a thieving habit. Wish me luck. Fuck, wish all of us luck. Anyone want to hire a Gundam pilot?"

That thought was amusing. "Probably best not to put that on your resume, I think." Probably best to find a new name and a new... everything, to be honest.

"Yeah, but... I mean, I sort of know why you were looking like someone killed your cat, now," he said, with a distant look in his eyes. "I'm a thief if I'm not a pilot."

"You're from L2." And everyone knew about the plagues there. The quarantine measures. The massacres. "How do you keep smiling through all of it?"

"Ehhh, because I enjoy life. There's a lot of fun to be had if you look for it." He waggled his eyebrows at Wufei and snagged a beer. "If I'm gonna be alive, I'm going to enjoy it."

Huh. Well. That was something. Honestly, he'd learned more about the people around him in the last day or two than he had in a long time, and they weren't wrong. They didn't have bad ideas. Go back to the circus because it was peaceful. Enjoy life because it was something that they had. Something that Wufei had. "I'd say that's a pretty good point."

"Isn't it?" He handed the first beer to Wufei without asking if he wanted it, and then grabbed himself another. "Father Maxwell said life is God's gift. Don't waste it. I think he was specifically looking at me when he said it." Duo winked.

"More like a curse," Wufei replied, and he pushed his shoulder into Duo's to show that he didn't really mean it. "We lived." And not everyone did. Not people he'd wanted to live. "I suppose that's the best way to continue for all the people who didn't." The ones they killed, the ones they lost.

"Yes. People don't really die if you remember them. They live on in you." Duo could go back to L2 and become a priest. And a thief. Maybe both. He had an undeniable something. The kind of something other people probably found irresistibly charming. There was a darkness lurking underneath it, and Wufei thought that most people might not even see it.

He'd had enough darkness. "I wonder what Heero and Quatre plan to do."

"Quatre? Family business to run, better part of a damn colony still." Duo popped the cap on his beer and took a swig. "He's sweeter than most people would be with that much money. I think he should go into politics. He'd actually try to help people."

"I always wondered how he managed to be one of us." Probably he shouldn't have. If anything, his background was somewhat more similar to Quatre's than any of the others insofar as being the ultimate scion of his people. Sort of. It was hard to say. "And Heero..."

Duo inhaled, a sharp sound as if thinking about it hurt. "Sort of afraid to guess. Maybe he can join Relena's imperial guard."

Ahhh. There was more there than met the eye. He had thought there might be, but sometimes it was hard to tell. Possibly it was one-sided. "I can think of better things to do."

"So can I. I don't know if he can. This is all he's ever known. I at least had a family, sorta. I grew up with people. Heero..." Not so much. "We know more than war. If it's over, how do you learn to stop?"

Wufei didn't know. And he didn't know how to find a way to stop. "Maybe we just learn to do new things?"

"I hope we all can," Duo said, almost cheerily. He took another swig. "But let's focus on now."

"I'm not getting drunk with you."

Duo clicked his tongue, and sighed. "Wufei, you're just no fun, man. I want to see you unwind! You've earned it!"

And all Wufei could do was shake his head and smile, because no. No, he hadn't, and no, he wasn't getting drunk, but unwind... maybe he could do that. "Fine. Lead the way, stop loitering."

"Why are the two of you lingering at the edges of everything?" Sally waved at them from one of the clusters.

"I was holding him hostage," Duo said cheerfully, as if he'd spotted an opportunity, and pushed Wufei forward. "And now it's your turn. You can't let him leave until he cracks a smile, okay?"

"Hostage he is," Sally agreed, and Wufei sighed. He was clearly going to have a long evening.

Maybe he'd have time to figure out what came next.


End file.
